This post is in response to a certain theist well-known on this forum for using the disingenuous tactic of taking the unfortunate practice of some scientists of using "God" as a figure of speech for the Grand Unified Theory, or the basis or reality, out of context, and twisting them into "evidence" of his apologetics campaign.
[...]
Britain's most famous scientist has declared God redundant.
In a provocative book, Professor Stephen Hawking said modern physics left no room for a Creator - and that science could explain the origins of the universe.
In The Grand Design, the best-selling author concludes: 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
'Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
'It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper and set the universe going.'
The book, co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published on September 9, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos.
He cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun.
'That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions - the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass - far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.'
Prof Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe, writing in A Brief History Of Time in 1988: 'If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz16BG0pkoQ
Albert Einstein is another eminent physicist that is often dishonestly misrepresented as having believed in a personal God, again due to an unfortunate usage of a figure of speech - his famous "God doesn't play dice with the universe." I'd like to take the opportunity to set the record straight on what Einstein's opinion of the Judeo-Christian God was:
1. Albert Einstein: God is a Product of Human Weakness
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954
2. Albert Einstein & Spinoza's God: Harmony in the Universe
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
- Albert Einstein, responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein's question "Do you believe in God?" quoted in: Has Science Found God?, by Victor J Stenger
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman
During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man's own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world.
- Albert Einstein, quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief, James Haught
5. Albert Einstein: Idea of a Personal God is Childlike
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.
- Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.
- Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman
9. Albert Einstein: Scientists Can Hardly Believe in Prayers to Supernatural Beings
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
- Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. ...
- Albert Einstein, Science and Religion (1941)
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events. ...
- Albert Einstein, Science and Religion (1941)
The point of course, is most emphatically not to claim that the personal position of any scientist no matter how eminent, on any metaphysical issue, makes the position correct by virtue of the scientist's intellectual stature, but rather that in their claim that eminent scientists believe in a personal God, theistic apologists are lying, as is their long and cherished tradition.
Addendum:
Leading Scientists Still Reject God
Edited by niner, 25 November 2010 - 03:13 AM.
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